Faintley Speaking

Author Gladys Mitchell was herself a schoolteacher of history, English, and games for nearly 40 years. That explains why so many of her novels are set in schools or involve schoolteachers; thus far, I've read just a dozen of Mitchell's book and already amongst them Laurels are Poison, Death at the Opera, Tom Brown's Body, and St. Peter's Finger were set at schools, while now Faintley Speaking involves a dead natural-science teacher and unfolds at a co-ed school for quite a few chapters.

Faintley Speaking begins with a strange parcel delivery and with 13-year-old Mark Street unhappily on holiday at a backwater and dull seaside resort. His family has unfortunately encountered a loathsome teacher from his school vacationing at the very same show more hotel. Miss Faintley insists on taking the boy on a tour of the Cathedral at nearby Torbury. Mark gleefully plots to ditch her at the first opportunity, but the joke's on him: she ditches him as soon as they get off the bus! A few days later, Beatrice Lestrange Bradley's intrepid Amazonian assistant, Laura Menzies, accompanied by Mark Street, stumble onto Lilian Faintley's body.

How and why was prim, humorless schoolteacher Lilian Faintley involved in retrieving parcels and then forwarding them to an unsavory shopkeeper named Tomson? Why was she killed? What do the ferns in the packages mean? Who are Miss Faintley's confederates? In addition to sleuthing about the seaside village and the city of Torbury, Mrs. Bradley installs Laura to be the replacement teacher for the deceased Miss Faintley. Laura's school adventure proves hilarious. A favorite and sample quote: One female teacher acerbically notes to Laura, "Although we only get four-fifths of the men's money and work three times as hard as most of them, we're looked upon as bloated plutocrats." And Laura's dealing with the officious and awful Mr. Tomalin will have you cheering!

The mystery's resolution comes as quite a surprise. Mrs. Bradley divulges the murderer at the beginning of Chapter 12, 79 percent into the novel (there are no page numbers in the Kindle Edition, which I read), but the reader won't discover what were in the mysterious parcels until the very last chapter. The identity of the murderer quite astounded me, and I didn't really know what was in the parcels, although I suspected some sort of smuggling, beginning about one-third of the way into the novel.

Faintley Speaking doesn't fall in the first tier of Mrs. Bradley mysteries, like Death at the Opera, When Last I Died, Tom Brown's Body, The Dancing Druids, and, of course, The Saltmarsh Murders, Mitchell's tour de force. However, Mitchell builds plenty of suspense and strews enough humor throughout to keep you reading eagerly to the last page. A second-tier Mrs. Bradley novel still beats out 90 percent of mysteries that are out there; you won't be faintly sorry that you read Faintley Speaking. show less